His face was a mass of scars and metal plates grafted over motley skin that had obviously been burned to the bone at one time. He possessed no hair, not even eyebrows. One eye stared roundly out of the lesions; the other was an empty socket discolored to a deep purple-red. His head sat immobile on his neck, which was collared by a thin band of steel. On the band, in the middle of where his throat would have been, protruded a small black box.
"I am Abraxas," he said. The black box vibrated. "I trust you will forgive my appearance. I do not entertain often."
He pressed a button on the wheelchair's arm, and the metal collar moved his head stiffly to the right. "This is Circe, whom you have already met."
Remo walked forward. "It was you," he said.
"At the cave? Indeed it was. Oh, I wouldn't come any closer if I were you." Abraxas jutted his claw hand over the girl's exposed throat. His head was still facing Circe, but his eye was fixed on Remo. "She's alive, you see, and any move you make will change the situation drastically." He laughed, the sound coming low and distorted from the artificial voice box.
Remo halted. "Okay," he said. "What do you want?"
Abraxas's one eye opened wide in mock innocence. "Why, to talk. I wish to talk with both of you. Wake up, Circe. This is for you, too." He jabbed her flesh lightly with the claw. She came awake moaning. "That's better. We can talk now, can't we, my dear?"
She turned toward Remo weakly, her eyes half closed. "Don't stay," she whispered, struggling for breath.
Abraxas shook with laughter. "But of course he'll stay. The man is your lover." He spat out the word with sudden malevolence. "He doesn't want to see you get hurt. Isn't that right... Remo?" The metal claw toyed with her throat.
"She needs a doctor," Remo said.
"You don't know what she needs!" The wheelchair hummed and glided behind the divan in seconds. "I know. I alone. Abraxas." His mouth twisted. "I made you, Circe. And this is how you repay me."
The girl stifled a sob. Her fingers opened and closed on her bloody chest.
"Don't waste your tears. You have no right to them. Have you ever heard of loyalty, Circe?"
"Leave her alone," Remo said.
"Keep out of this," Abraxas hissed. He turned back to Circe, the claw dangling over her face. "I'll tell you about loyalty. When I was a young man, you performed a service for me that enabled me to carry out the work of my destiny— a destiny that was planned for three thousand years, ever since Abraxas, the all-god of the ancients, disappeared into oblivion. He had given up trying to sway men in their corruption, you see. He didn't have the power. But I have." He bent low over her. "I have! Out of the rubble of this body, I created Abraxas anew, Abraxas the perfect god, the giver of life, the force of good and evil, because it was my destiny to do so. For your part in preventing my destruction at the hands of my father, I have given you the world. The world!" he shouted.
"I took a servant from the slums of Corinth and gave her a mind. You have traveled the world and lived in splendor. You have received the finest education possible. You have been privy to information that will shape the future of mankind. I have repaid my debt to you, Circe. All I required of you was your loyalty."
He breathed heavily, the claw scraping against her white skin in a sensual rhythm. "Others give their loyalty willingly. At this moment, millions are waiting for just a glimpse of Abraxas. I am their leader. They are depending on me to protect them from their enemies. Enemies like you, Circe. For those who are disloyal to Abraxas are the enemies of all mankind."
"I... I should never have saved you," the girl said, weeping. "Your father was right. You should have been destroyed."
"It was not my destiny," Abraxas said softly, craning mechanically toward her face. "It was my fate to live and rule all the people in all the lands of the earth, just as it was my fate to be betrayed by a woman with the lusts of a common slut."
"That's enough," Remo said, stepping forward briskly. Without warning, a thin, bright fiber of electricity shot out from the base of the wheelchair. It struck Remo in the leg, sending him sprawling, dazed, across the room. Circe screamed.
"Do you see how easily life is ended?" Abraxas continued in the same soft voice. "In one moment, the man you thought would save you has ceased to exist. Abraxas gives life, and he takes it away." He raised the claw, crying in despair. "Oh my beautiful, sullied enchantress!"
The claw came down. The body on the divan jerked convulsively, a fountain of blood pouring from her throat.
Remo heard a strangled wail come out from the depths of his soul.
Feeling as if he were dragging himself out of some hideous nightmare, he pulled himself to his feet and staggered toward the other end of the room. Against the wall, he could make out the blurred figure of the creature in the wheelchair.
"You're still alive," the magnified voice said with some surprise.
Remo struggled to focus. Below him lay the woman he had made love to an hour before. Her throat was ripped out brutally. Her eyes stared upward in final terror. The flesh of her face was still warm. It couldn't be, he thought, his brain a confused mass of pain and crazy images: Circe huddled in the cave; Circe lying beneath him, her flesh hot and provocative; Circe asking for help, her face lit by the flame of a flickering candle. What was this thing, this slaughtered beast lying dead in front of him? And the man in the wheelchair, a blur, hard to reach...
"You'll die for this," he said evenly. "I swear you'll die." Drunkenly, still shaken from the electric shock, he lunged for the wheelchair.
A cloud of white smoke hissed from the chair and filled the room.
A moment later, Abraxas was gone.
?Chapter Seventeen
Smith and Chiun both heard Circe's scream. The smoke was clearing from the room as Chiun rushed in through the door to the hallway. Remo was standing near the divan, his eyes fixed on the dead girl drenched in her own blood. His hand was touching her face. He neither moved nor acknowledged the old man.
"What has happened?" Chiun said. "Who has done this thing?"
Remo didn't answer. He lifted his hand from Circe's cheek and closed her eyes.
Smith arrived, panting. "This is it," he said. "This is the room—" He took in the scene. "Oh, no," he said softly, going over to the girl.
Remo stepped away. Then, moving wordlessly along the walls, he smashed every panel systematically, splintering the wood with blows so powerful, they shook the floor.
"Come to your senses," Chiun snapped abruptly.
"I have," Remo said. "The bastard was in a wheelchair. You would have seen him if he'd left through the door. Remember Big Ed?"
"Big Ed?" Smith asked.
"A hoodlum in Florida," Chiun said. "He used a false floor to escape from us. But this—"
"Circe did say something to me about the house being full of secret passageways," Smith said, looking over at the dead girl. "Did you know her, Remo?"
"Yes."
"I did, too." Smith walked over to her body.
"Forget it," Remo said harshly. He smashed through a panel into dead space. "Here it is. Help me, Chiun." In less than a minute the boards were cleared away.
The opening led into another chamber, also empty, covered with soundproof tiles and hung with a half-dozen black-screened television monitors. A moving camera was stationed in the corner. On the far wall was a digital chronometer that kept time to the second. It was 11:52:45.
"But this room wasn't even on the blueprint," Smith said, bewildered. "I'm sure of it. It pinpointed the location of the transmission area as the room we just came from."
"What are you talking about?" Remo growled as he tapped the walls. "Abraxas said something about showing himself to the world."